Press

Vinyl Me, Please is a record of the month club. The best damn record club, in fact. Every month, Vinyl Me, Please features one album that is essential to the modern vinyl collection and sends it to thousands of members worldwide.

Each record is pressed exclusively for Vinyl Me, Please members with features you can’t get anywhere else—things like bonus tracks, inserts, colored variants—and comes packed with a 12”x12” album-inspired art print and custom cocktail pairing recipe.

FAQ’s

How does Vinyl Me, Please work?

Each month, the VMP team picks 1 album that is essential to the modern vinyl collection. We package it up alongside a 12” x 12” album-inspired art print and a custom cocktail pairing recipe and send it out to our members worldwide.

Once signed up, new members will start getting our weekly newsletter The Standard and are able to access member exclusive products inside the online VMP Store. Anything they buy there will be included in their next shipment.

How does Vinyl Me, Please work with record labels and artists?

The team works closely with both the label and the artist to come up with a truly special version of the record - creating a pressing made exclusively for members. We create at least 2-3 product features that set the VMP edition apart from others. In most cases, we defer to the artists on what those might be.

In the past, we have included handwritten notes, color vinyl, diary excerpts from when the record was being recorded, drawings, listening notes, and many other things to make the package unique.

What kinds of albums does VMP feature?

Vinyl Me, Please features a broad spectrum of great music. Highlighting new artists, essential releases from artists you may have never heard of, as well as a healthy dose of must-have reissues from decades past.

Our team is constantly listening to new music and looking for albums that are complete works of art from start to finish. We’re not just content with one or two great tracks, we need entire albums that are worthy of taking up precious space on your record shelf - the kind people will fight over when you die.

Over the course of a membership, Vinyl Me, Please members will receive a wide variety of music, spanning various genres, times periods, and artists. Not all may be familiar but all will be worthy of multiple spins.

The team works closely with both the label and the artist to come up with a truly special version of the record - creating a pressing made exclusively for members. Every Vinyl Me, Please record comes with a unique feature set (custom lyric books, art, color vinyl, inserts) you can’t get anywhere else.

What albums has VMP featured in the past?

Vinyl Me, Please has featured everything from classic soul / jazz records, to hip hop/rap, to indie rock, to the hottest new releases coming out today. A couple of major releases include:

Vinyl Me, Please is bootstrapped and proud of it. Tyler and Matt maxed out their personal credit cards to get it off the ground but the company has been self-sustaining since then. Despite numerous investment offers, we’ve chosen to remain self-funded. We appreciate our independence and want to build a company that serves our members first and foremost.

Founding Story

Vinyl Me, Please was born out of a passion for a passion for music and a desire for something that didn’t exist.

Matt and Tyler met and lived together while working at a tech company in Chicago. A record player became the focal point of their apartment but didn’t have any records. Going to the local record store was great, but the boys often left overwhelmed and empty-handed. One day at work they began talking about record clubs of old. They thought that would be a cool way to build their own collections but after some Google-ing, they couldn’t find anything like that so they said, “Why don’t we start our own?”

VMP officially launched on January 1, 2013 with 12 paying members. Many of the original members said they enjoyed the service so Matt & Tyler asked if they’d tell their friends. Little by little, the membership grew from 12 members to 50 to 100 to almost 300 by the end of the 2013.

The membership continued to grow, eventually hitting 500 by April of 2014 when they featured Diarrhea Planet’s ‘I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams.’ It was the first ever Vinyl Me, Please exclusive pressing and set the trend for months to come.

It wasn’t until July / August of 2014 when Matt & Tyler were finally able to quit their jobs and do VMP full-time alongside fellow team members.

Now in 2016, VMP has as a team of 13 people and serves more than 20,000 members across more than 40 countries worldwide.

Matt Fiedler — Matt is co-founder and CEO. Matt graduated from Belmont University in 2011 with a dual degree in Music Business & Entrepreneurship. One time he introduced himself as "Math".

Tyler Barstow — Tyler is a co-founder of Vinyl Me, Please and currently serves as their Head of Content. While working on the idea for, and early stages of, Vinyl Me, Please, he worked as a Support Agent at CoSupport in Chicago. Prior to that he worked with a non-profit in Raleigh, NC.

Cameron Schaefer — Cameron Schaefer is partner and Head of Music. Cameron graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2006, and served as an Air Force pilot for 8 years before leaving to take the obvious next step - a career in the music industry. He also co-founded the Vinyl + Cocktails blog in 2012.

Matt Hessler — Having worked in digital marketing since 2002 Matt has witnessed the evolution of online marketing from a pre-IPO Google, and a Facebook that only invited college students, to the intense multi-channel marketing programs of today. After working with several Adtech startups, Matt decided to apply those skills to a product he cared more deeply about at Vinyl Me, Please.

“Vinyl Me Please are finding ways to make vinyl fresh and exciting for the modern world” Read about it here

“Vinyl Me, Please has quickly become the distinguished authority on vinyl, proving that there is a homegrown market for those who love hip-hop, soul, funk, R&B, jazz and blues. No more having to pay $50 at your local Urban Outfitters to own your favorite artists’ record thanks to Vinyl Me, Please.” Read about it here

“Another exciting presence in the market being Vinyl, Me Please, an independent record club that delivers record junkies the nostalgic dose of polyvinyl chloride they’ve been waiting for.” Read about it here

“Every month the good folks over at Vinyl Me, Please dig up an often forgotten-about classic, like…Black Sabbath’s Paranoid…and reissue it with exclusive artwork….it’s almost like a fancy, slow-moving Pandora for your record player.” Read about it here

“Every aspect of this exclusive release is meant to celebrate the gregarious and personable aspects of each song on the album.” Read about it here

“Vinyl Me, Please, operating out of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, harks back to mail-order record clubs of yore, albeit more in tune with the current generation… The small staff at VMP curates new releases, classic re-issues and overlooked gems with special exclusive pressings, commissioned album-inspired art prints and even cocktail pairings to create a complete musical experience.” Read about it here

“Vinyl Me, Please appeals in three key ways. One, listening to a vinyl record while sipping a harmonizing cocktail results in a sensory experience that marries touch, taste and sight with sound. Two, while streaming music offers access, vinyl records provide tangible ownership, which for some equates to the difference between owning a piece of art and searching for it on Google. And three, Vinyl Me, Please delivers by mixing the nostalgia of a tactile album with the excitement of discovering new artists or revisiting groundbreaking music from the past.” Read about it here

“Record subscription service Vinyl Me, Please is at this point, a phenomenon. Billed as “the best damn record club,” it’s managed to make #mailday fun again, a monthly record paired with cocktail recipe, custom artwork and more. Hell, even the release announcements are anticipated and marked days for collectors.” Read about it here

“The Vinyl Me Please service is super cool if you want to treat yourself, and would likely make a great gift for a special someone who is a big fan of vinyls, too.” Read about it here